Ashitha Nagesh
BBC News, London

"We've been going for 19 years, but we've never been as busy as this," Zohra Khaku, who runs the Muslim Youth Helpline in the UK, tells me.

She is one of many outreach workers in this country dealing with the overwhelming impact the virus has had on Black and Asian communities.

Now, Public Health England has confirmed that ethnic minorities are disproportionately more likely to become critically ill with the virus, and to die.

The effects have been brutal - not just physical, but psychological, societal and financial. And they hint at why our communities were so vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place.

Read the full story here.

Kostas Kallergis
Europe Producer, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Greece has suspended all flights coming from Qatar until 15 June after 12 passengers on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Athens tested positive for Covid-19.

All 91 passengers were tested. Nine of those found to be positive were Pakistani nationals with Greek residence permits, all coming from the city of Gujrat. Two were Greek nationals from Australia and one was a Japanese national.

According to the current protocol for those entering the country by air, all passengers were transported after the inspection to quarantine hotels until the test results were completed.

The passengers who tested positive will remain isolated there for 14 days.

Those who tested negative will be isolated for seven days. At the end of the seven days they will be tested again before being released.

Image source, Getty Images

Coronavirus has spread to a strategic shipyard in Russia’s Arctic north where nuclear-armed submarines are made for the navy.

Sevmash, in the town of Severodvinsk, has a total staff of nearly 30,000, but only half are going into work now, Interfax news agency reports. By 26 May, 299 had tested positive for coronavirus there.

The other main employer in the town is Zvezdochki, which repairs submarines, and there are also coronavirus cases among its 11,000 workers. At least one has died of Covid-19.

Russia’s defence ministry says it is about to start clinical trials of a Russian-made vaccine against Covid-19 on 50 volunteers. It has not given specific details about the vaccine.

Mark D'Arcy
Parliamentary Correspondent

Image source, PA

Comedy gold…. In theory, what one MP called the "Mogg Conga," the Commons new socially distanced method of voting is perfectly simple.

A queue of honourable members snaked around the Palace of Westminster, back as far as the parliamentary offices at Portcullis House (quite a long way!) and slowly filed into their Chamber, marching left of the Mace to vote "Aye" and right of the Mace to vote "No".

Simple in theory, but the practice was a bit messier.

Read more from Mark here.

The daily press conference was held by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who was joined by Prof John Newton, who leads the UK's testing programme.

Here's what they told us:

• In order of significance, demographic factors which affects people's susceptibility to coronavirus include: Age, sex, living in a city, and ethnic background. The government is looking at how to close these gaps, with work led by the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch
• Other health inequalities, linked to occupation, income and deprivation, also apply and may partially explain the effect of ethnicity
• Each day, just over 40,000 antibody tests, which can tell whether someone has previously had the virus, are being administered to NHS and care staff. The government wants to roll them out to the public but Mr Hancock stressed that we do not yet know whether antibodies convey significant immunity
• After criticism from the statistics watchdog, the government committed to working with the watchdog to publish its statistics in the best way
• If someone tests negative while isolating due to an instruction from a contract tracer, they must still complete the isolation period. This is because it is possible to test negative while incubating the virus

Vic Motune, of The Voice newspaper, says his readers are concerned about the apparent indifference to the black community in Public Health England's report on relative risks, as it does not include any recommendations.

He also asks how the government will follow the lead of local authorities in protecting people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.

Matt Hancock says "we need to do more work" to find out how much of the disproportionate number of deaths of BAME people is down to issues like their occupation, housing or other issues.

Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch will be leading the next phase of the research, he says,

But he promises action "as soon as we can", adding that there is no need to wait for another report.

Sarah O'Grady from the Daily Express asks what has happened to the government's long-promised reforms to make social care for the elderly in England more affordable and less haphazard.

Hancock says one of the "positives" of the pandemic has been how much it has shown people value and recognise the importance of social care provision.

He says he is determined to push on with changes to put the sector on a "sustainable footing", saying they have been "pushed to the sidelines" by successive governments for too long.

Asked to give an example, he says there is a need for the NHS and social care providers to work much closer together, alluding to proposals in his party's election manifesto without giving much detail.

On to the government's 14-day quarantine plan now, and a question from George Parker, of the Financial Times.

From 8 June, people entering the UK from abroad will be told to isolate for 14 days or face a fine.

Prof Newton says "caution has won the day" in drawing up the strategy, but he has had no input.

Matt Hancock doesn't answer a question about whether people can take foreign holidays this year, and declines to speculate on which other European countries might be interested in forming an "air bridge" with the UK, to allow quarantine-free travel.

LBC's Ben Kentish is up next.

He suggests the government has vastly under-estimated the likely number of deaths, and says official data on excess deaths from the ONS earlier on Tuesday show death rates are three times as high as were being talked about at the start of the pandemic.

Hancock rejects this, saying ministers have never predicted how many people might die, saying the only forecast published was that by Imperial College which warned that without any lockdown or social distancing measures, the death toll could be as high as 500,000.

The health secretary says the government has been "fully transparent" about what it is trying to do. He welcomes the ONS figures, saying they show overall deaths and those in care homes are coming down.

To recap, the ONS figures showed that as of 22 May 48,106 deaths were registered where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate.

The weekly figures for deaths between 15 and 22 May, which totalled 2,872, were the lowest since March. Overall, there were 13,800 deaths that week – 2,500 more than normal during this period.

You can read more about the ONS figures here.

Image source, EPA

John Newton, testing coordinator for England, urges people not to jump to conclusions about today's report into Covid-19 risks, external.

The report does say that coronavirus outcomes are worse for people from black, Asian and minority ethnic people, says Prof Newton, but more work is needed to find out why.

"It is not necessarily because of their ethnicity, it may be related to their occupation or other reasons why they might be at higher levels of exposure," he tells the Downing Street press conference.

He says recommendations will follow in due course, in answer to a question from ITV's Emma Morgan, who points out that recommendations had been promised today.

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

The daily round of figures show, while the picture is improving, the UK is still seeing a significant impact from coronavirus.

There were 1,600 new cases confirmed, over 400 admissions to hospital and over 300 deaths.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock says it is clear there is “still some way to go”.

Worryingly, these figures are higher than countries like Spain and Italy are reporting.

Both of those have been badly affected by the pandemic like the UK.

They are a week or two ahead of us in terms of the trajectory on their outbreaks.

But it still begs the question why our rates of infection are not lower.

We now move on to questions from the media, starting with the BBC's Rianna Croxford.

She says the Public Health England report published earlier on racial and demographic disparities only told the country what it already knew and asks Hancock why the government has not done more to "support and protect" BAME communities from the virus.

She also asks about criticism of the government's testing data by the UK's statistics authority and whether ministers are embarrassed by it.

On the second point, Hancock says he has spoken to the UK stats body's chief earlier and he was looking at ways in which the information could be "constantly improved".

But he insists that the testing regime has been scaled up very quickly and the metrics being used now are the "simplest way of presenting what is a complicated picture" relating to the different types of tests.

On the first point, Hancock says he understands the anger that people feel about racial injustice and the need to tackle it, adding that he is trying to do his bit within the NHS.

"There is much more work that needs to be done," he says.

Answering a question from Barbara from Bridport on when an antibody test will be available to the general public, Matt Hancock says he "understands" her "yearning to know".

"We will be rolling out antibody tests more broadly," he says, without giving a timetable.

The first question is from a member of the public.

Danny, from Huddersfield, asks if the crucial R number - that's the infection rate - goes up following the relaxation of restrictions yesterday, what kind of restrictions could be re-introduced.

Hancock says the lockdown was futher eased because ministers believed it safe to do so but it will be kept under review.

He says there are a number of steps the government could take in such a scenario, either at a national or local level, and that this will depend on where outbreaks occur.

John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England, who is appearing alongside Matt Hancock, says that any resurgence of the virus is likely to be "patchy" and any counter-measures are likely to be localised.

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

Over in the UK's House of Commons, MPs have just finished voting on the government's proposal for discontinuing the virtual Parliament.

And the government has won - 261 votes to 163.

Their proposal states that MPs should be physically in Parliament in order to participate.

However government minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has promised to bring forward a further proposal which would allow those who cannot attend due to age or medical reasons to be able to question the government remotely.

But they will still need to be in Parliament to vote.

MPs can enter into an informal agreement known as "pairing". This means an MP from the opposing side of the absent politician agrees not to vote so the numbers are cancelled out.

Matt Hancock is talking about today's report on coronavirus risk factors, which confirms that people from black, asian and minority ethnic communities have been hit harder.

He makes a reference to the current situation in the United States, saying: "Black lives matter" and pays tribute to health workers from ethnic minorities.

He says he "loves" that the UK is "one of the most welcoming" countries in the world.

Matt Hancock says of the latest UK confirmed cases of coronavirus: "The trend is broadly down but there is still some way to go."

It's a slightly new format for the daily press conference - Health Secretary Matt Hancock is going through the latest coronavirus slides before taking questions.

Here are the slides he's talking us through.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock is at the podium in Downing Street to begin the UK government's daily coronavirus briefing.

The UK's track and trace systems are likely to feature in today's UK briefing, which is due to start in just a few minutes.

We'll be bringing you all the updates, so in the meantime why not watch this handy video about how it all works?